


fossil light

by faikitty



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gender-Neutral Main Character (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Hurt/Comfort, Other, Reader-Insert, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23807086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faikitty/pseuds/faikitty
Summary: “The scars.”The ones you don’t want me to see. “Your wrist, your neck, whatever other ones you have. Are they from the war?”
Relationships: Lucifer/Main Character (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 397





	fossil light

**Author's Note:**

> yes, I know we've seen Lucifer shirtless. but he's still absurdly covered up in all but, like, ONE of his cards. based on that card he also doesn't have nipples. we make our own canon here.
> 
> **edit (5/13/20)** : [ Emil drew fanart](https://twitter.com/ddretyi/status/1260691317337853952?s=21) inspired by this fic and I'm uhhhhhh crying?

Lucifer is never fully unclothed.

It didn’t strike you as odd at first. When his brothers would tease him for wearing full suits on hot days, he would simply retort that he would be willing to give them recommendations on brands if they wished. Pride, you thought. A desire to always meet his own standard of beauty. And when you were intimate with him for the first time, you had _much_ more to focus on than the fact that he never removed his starched black dress shirt. Your body was a blur of sensations, of the cool air meeting your own bare skin, the firmness of his bed at your back, the brush of his lips skimming your collarbone, your chest, your thighs. You saw what he _chose_ to reveal: his dark eyes, narrowed, pupils blown wide with unrestrained want; his hands, ungloved, claws sharp and biting against your hips to push just past the edge of pain. His horns glinted as if made of obsidian, and he allowed you to run your fingertips over their sharp, ridged edges, leaning into your touch as his eyes lidded and his wings quivered behind him.

Pride. Passion. Easy enough to chalk it up to that, until you find yourself _wanting_ to see more and being denied. An attempt to invite Lucifer swimming at the lake is met with excuses about his workload. Invitations to go shopping at Majolish so he can try on less restrictive clothing somehow turns into him buying three new outfits for _you_. Once, without even thinking, when you are alone together with your back against his bedroom wall and his leg between your thighs, you kiss the crook of his neck, your fingers playing at the untucked end of his shirt. But before your fingers slide even an inch along the bare skin of his abdomen his hand goes tight around your arm to jerk it away, pinning both wrists above your head while he kisses you so hard it makes you dizzy and forces out all other thoughts. It isn’t until you’re exhausted and sated that you remember. By then, it’s too late to ask.

But you do ask, eventually, being as straightforward as you can.

Lucifer huffs a startled laugh when you do. He looks up from his seat on the couch, his legs crossed with papers stacked on his thigh and his pen paused mid-stroke. The light from the nearby fire catches the whites of his teeth as he smiles. “You want me to what?” he asks, amusement obvious. You _know_ he heard you the first time.

Still, you lean forward, perched on the edge of his bed. “I said, take off your shirt,” you repeat. You hope the firelight is dim enough to hide the flush to your cheeks. You doubt it is.

“Awfully forward tonight, hm?” he comments with a raised brow, and you feel your face grow hotter. “Try to be patient a bit longer. I have to finish this work tonight.”

“That’s not what I _meant_ ,” you protest hastily, but he’s already ignoring you, shuffling through the papers with his pen tapping absentmindedly against his lips. You fall back with a sigh, landing with a “fwoof” and leaving your legs half-dangling off the bed. You aren’t sure why you thought a direct request would work, but it was worth a try.

Always. It is _always_ like this. Questions Lucifer deems too prying are met with silence, non-answers, or straightforward denials. Some things you understand. Lilith is still a difficult subject for him to discuss, as are his fall from grace, the war, and the intricacies of his relationship with his brothers. You respect that. But this ought to be a non-issue, one that you’re surely making into a bigger deal than it has any right to be. Part of you thinks you should just say, _Hey Lucifer, we’ve spent the night together over a dozen times now and yet I’ve never once seen you shirtless or even with your sleeves pushed up, why is that_?

Does he not actually like you? Are his words—the gentle, reserved affections he murmurs into your skin at night—lies? Is he hiding some big secret—or some small secret he _thinks_ is big? Are there other demonic features to him, like scales bored into his skin, that he thinks you’ll find repulsive? Is it…

Is it the scars?

You’ve seen them, the scars. A faint, white line cuts through the inside of Lucifer’s right wrist, visible only when his sleeve pulls up and bares the skin between his shirt and glove. Another lies at the nape of his neck; when he’s ruffled his hair in frustration at his brothers’ antics, you’ve caught sight of its jagged mark. You know he has others as well, even though you haven’t seen them, because you’ve seen him _react_ to their hidden existence. He limps sometimes, winces on rainy days when he thinks no one is looking and some half-remembered pain catches him off-guard. You’ve wondered before if it’s from an old wound, if scar tissue is laced so tightly through one of his joints that it feels like trying to bend steel when the air is damp and cold. Lucifer has always straightened his gait when he catches you watching. You’ve never asked him about it. But what if…?

“And here I thought you were waiting for me, not off adventuring in your own little world.”

You jump at Lucifer’s voice, blinking at him in dazed confusion. You hadn’t realized how much time had passed. You don’t have a chance to respond before he is sitting next to you on the bed and leaning over you, one hand pressed to the mattress by your head and the other cupping your cheek to draw you into a kiss. His fingers brush beneath your jaw and tilt up your chin, and your eyes fall closed as you take in the taste of him and the soft of his lips against your own.

Then turn your head, push against his chest, and force him to pull away.

Lucifer frowns at you as you sit up, his hands falling into his lap. “Is something wrong?”

You don’t immediately look at him. Your gaze falls over the stack of papers on the couch, pen set carefully on top, and the neatly folded pile of clothes next to it with Lucifer’s jacket, gloves, vest, and tie. All lie there but that dress shirt, which remains covering him as always. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the white scar on his wrist; it slices through his palm as well, you realize. It almost looks as if he received it when he caught a blade with his bare hands.

“Are they from the war?” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

Your question is met with silence. You glance up at Lucifer; he stares back at you, confused. Then his eyes narrow with dawning realization. “What?”

“The scars.” _The ones you don’t want me to see_. “Your wrist, your neck, whatever other ones you have. Are they from the war?”

_ Is that why you hide them from me? _

The darkness that flashes across Lucifer’s face is familiar. You’ve seen it before, when his anger was turned on you, when you shoved yourself into his business and interfered with Belphegor, Beelzebub, Luke. It was righteous anger, at least to him, the kind of fury that allowed angels to rend cities asunder at God’s command. But this is… different, somehow. The anger that settles in his eyes is colder, darker, _older_ , and you suspect it is not directed at you at all. There’s a distance to his gaze, even as he searches your face as if trying to find a way to slither out of answering this question too. There’s _pain_ to it. And when he opens his mouth at last, it’s to say a single word.

“Yes.”

Lucifer stands abruptly, and your brief flash of joy at his honesty is dashed as he walks away from you. You start to say something but quickly think better of it. You wait instead, watching him step toward the fire in the hearth. He lingers in front of it, back turned to you, more weight on one leg than the other.

“The war was long. Not a single one of us escaped unscathed. Diavolo is the most powerful demon I have ever met, and even he has scars from the assistance he offered me.” Lucifer’s arms bend. The only sound besides his voice is the crackle of the fire and the rustle of shifting fabric. “We all have scars, myself more than the others. That’s as it _should_ be though. I _am_ the oldest, and I’m responsible for starting the rebellion.” His gaze is fixed on something—the fire, you think. “…falling leaves its marks.”

Lucifer drops his shirt to the floor.

Marks, he said. You can _see_ them now, arrow wounds and whip streaks, and on his lower back, twin gashes on either side of his spine, like the wound left in the earth when a plant is torn out by its roots. You rise unthinkingly to your feet and step closer, and it is then that you see the _burns_ , the small swirls of discoloration like galaxies and flecks like stardust. Does an angel falling from the Celestial Realm produce heat like a meteor crashing to Earth? Did Lucifer—the Light-Bringer, the morning star—light up the heavens as he left them behind? Like a comet streaking across the night sky? A star imploding at the end of its life?

You knew Lucifer had scars. You didn’t know he had this _many_.

Lucifer turns at the sound of your approaching footsteps. His abdomen, too, is cut through with scars that break the smooth muscles into pieces. One in particular makes your breath catch in your throat. It lies directly over his heart, sharp and angular, and you wonder how many times he nearly _died_ during the war.

Is that why he touches his chest so often? To remind himself he still lives?

“Ah, yes, _that_ look,” Lucifer says, a wry smile playing on his lips. “I know that look. It’s the same one Diavolo used to give me when I returned from battle with another near-mortal wound.” As if on cue, his hand goes to the scar over his heart, fingers spreading wide to cover it. His voice is almost wistful as he adds, “He always told me to rest and not push my luck. But fortune favors the bold, and I had a war to win.” A pause. “Or lose, I suppose.”

You’re close to him now, close enough to see the texture to the scars that mar his skin. You look up at him with a question in your eyes, your arm half-lifted in your hesitance. _Can I_?

Lucifer tilts his head in response. _If you wish_.

You take the hand that covers his heart into your own, turning it palm up to reveal the white line that divides it. You press a kiss to it, feather-soft. His fingers twitch, but his face remains impassive. He looks almost amused at the gentleness with which you treat him. You trail your fingers up his forearm, his bicep, tracing the old wounds into constellations with your fingertips, until you reach the scar on his chest. “Is that what you see them as?” you ask softly. You press against it; the pink turns white at the pressure. “A reminder that you lost?”

“Is that not what they are?” Lucifer’s voice is light; he might as well be discussing the weather. “They’re proof of battles lost. Mistakes made. Rebellions crushed.”

“Do you really think of it all as a mistake?”

Lucifer seems surprised by the question. He’s silent for a moment. “…the rebellion as a whole, no. I have no desire to return to the Celestial Realm. None whatsoever. But that does not change the fact that I failed.” He spreads his arms wide; you see the scars that ring them. “I will never be allowed to _forget_ that I failed and that my family suffered as a result.”

There is a scar that runs over the length of Lucifer’s shoulder, worryingly close to his throat. You follow it now, until you stand behind him, hand clasped lightly over it. “Your family didn’t die though,” you remind him. “If anything, you _saved_ them.”

Lucifer actually _laughs_ at that. “Saved them by causing them to fall from the Celestial Realm? You have a _very_ strange definition of the word.”

“What about Lilith?”

Lucifer stiffens at the name. His shoulder tenses beneath your touch and you release him. “What about her?” he asks carefully.

“You saved her life. You fell _because_ of her. The whole rebellion _began_ because you wanted to save her.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Lucifer’s voice has lost its lightness; it is as cold and unforgiving as iron. “I did it for myself. My pride. My unwillingness to compromise. Do not forget who you’re speaking to.”

“The start of the rebellion, maybe. But you can’t tell me your fall didn’t have anything to do with Lilith when I’ve seen you through her eyes,” you say. Lucifer doesn’t respond; you press your lips to a flame-licked spot of skin just to the left of his spine, and an unwitting shiver runs through him. “You call your scars proof of your failure, but I don’t see them like that.”

“...I’ll indulge you. Tell me what _you_ see then.”

“I see… someone who kept fighting no matter what. Someone who did what he thought was right. You did everything in your power to save your siblings. You even sacrificed your freedom forever for them.” You rest your forehead against his upper back and close your eyes, tracing his scars and learning their history like a blind man reading braille. If you could draw out the pain that lingers beneath their rough surface through touch alone, you would. “Your scars may be proof that you fought, but they aren’t proof that you lost or failed. Even the winners in a fight are left with scars.”

Lucifer is quiet for a long time. When he speaks, his voice has an odd quality to it that you can’t quite place. “Sometimes I believe you are a far better person as a human than I ever was as an angel.”

You aren’t sure what to say to that, so you don’t say anything at all. You let your hands speak for you; they skate lower, over rough lines left by whips or swords, over edges that bear semblance to a serrated knife. There is a gap; then your fingers run up against wounds that never seem to end. You open your eyes to see that you’ve reached his biggest scars, that twin pair of knotted flesh on either side of his spine, large and ragged as if something was torn from his skin with great force. Without thinking, you flatten your palms against them as you realize too late—

His wings.

Lucifer gives a choked gasp. His wings unfurl; they knock you away. But you would have moved even if they hadn’t; you’re already stammering out hasty apologies, your eyes wide and worried and words rambling as you insist that you didn’t mean to hurt him. He holds up a hand and you fall silent, watching with concern as he struggles to smooth out his suddenly uneven breathing. His wings quiver; the feathers dance in the firelight. After a moment, he clears his throat as if embarrassed and faces you, cheeks red.

“I didn’t mean to do that. I wasn’t expecting…” Lucifer looks away, face reddening further as he folds his wings in close to him. “Some of my scars are still tender. My apologies.”

“I should be the one apologizing,” you say quickly. All at once you feel guilty—for causing him pain, for dredging up memories too raw and deep to ever be fully healed. “I didn’t know I was hurting you.”

“You weren’t. Not really.” Lucifer chuckles, although there is little humor to it. “Besides, was this not what you wanted? For me to bare my scars to you like this?” He takes in your torn expression and adds, more softly, “It’s okay. It isn’t too painful. It just feels… odd. No one has touched or even seen my scars in a very long time.”

You don’t ask him if he’s sure. You’re worried he would change his mind, so you take him at his word and step forward again. He closes his eyes as he turns away; his wings have covered the scars protectively as if on instinct. This time, when your fingers part his feathers to touch the scars left by his torn out wings, he doesn’t make a sound. He only shudders faintly, a ripple running through the muscles beneath your fingertips. His wings, too, tremble, as if it is taking all of his self-control not to open them once more to push you away.

You don’t press down on the scars. You simply rest your hands against them. They’re large enough that the span of your palm doesn’t cover them completely, and as your fingers curl something inside your chest does too, as if someone is hollowing out the space beneath your sternum. You wish Lucifer had told you. You wish you could have stripped him of his armor months ago, _years_ ago, so you could have seen these scars, physical and emotional, that seem to hold him together all on their own with their fragile sort of strength. You wish you could have _helped_ him.

“I knew you tore out your wings,” you murmur. The agony, the grief, the _wrath_ that drove Lucifer to rip out his own wings, to mutilate the body his father had given him in the depths of his desperation as a final act of transgression… You’ve imagined it many times. How painful it must have been. How terrifying. “I knew they didn’t all grow back, but I didn’t realize how much damage you did… If I’d known—if you’d _told_ me, I—”

“You’d what?” Lucifer’s voice is deathly quiet. There’s a strain to it you’ve never heard before. “Comfort me as if I were a child? Mourn the loss of my ability to fly with me?”

You know he means it as sarcasm. But you answer honestly, threading your arms between his remaining wings to embrace him, holding him more tightly than you ever have before. “If that’s what you needed.” You breathe the words against his skin—hot like a brand, solid like a promise. “If that’s what you _need_.”

Lucifer is still. Impossibly so. His breath comes even, _too_ even, like he’s measuring every few seconds with it. His spine is taut, shoulders firm. You nestle your face in between his shoulder blades; his feathers whisper against your cheek. The only movement from him is the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest and the occasional unconscious flutter of his wings. He is still, still, still.

Then he isn’t.

Lucifer turns, quick as lightning, quicker even, to engulf you in his own embrace, his arms sliding beneath yours and his wings enveloping you from above as if he needs you as close to him as possible, as if he’s worried that if he releases his tight hold on you the slightest bit you’ll disappear like wisps of smoke. His head rests on your shoulder; his breath falls unsteady on your collarbone when he parts his lips. “This, then,” he murmurs. His voice breaks; the words split in two. “Let me stay like this. Only for a moment.”

_ As long as you need _ , you think, but you don’t say it. You close your eyes and tilt your head in against his, wrapping your arms around the broad of his back to pull instead of push, accept instead of offer. You feel him swallow hard and give a ragged exhale and too-quick stuttered inhale. He manages to steady himself on the next breath, and you almost wish he hadn’t. It might be better if he were to let himself mourn all that he has lost. But you were not there when he lost it, and he is not yet prepared to let you see _all_ of him in his weakness, so this is enough. _You_ are enough. You are an anchor in a storm you don’t feel, and you let yourself be what he needs to weather it.

You fit a hand to the back of his head and run your fingers through his hair, holding him close until his shaking has stopped and his wings and horns have receded. Even after they have, Lucifer waits several more moments before lifting his head and easing his tight embrace. His hands linger loosely on your forearms as if he’s reluctant to let you pull away entirely. He only manages to meet your eyes for a few seconds before glancing to the side, embarrassment painting his cheeks brighter than the fire. “Cute” is not a word anyone would use to describe him, but it fits him now, and you can’t resist leaning up to kiss his downturned lips. He leans into your touch, and when you part his expression is once more one of amusement.

“I’m not sure I will ever be used to you,” he admits, and you laugh.

“I hope you mean that in a good way.”

“I do.”

The hollow space in your chest fills with warmth. You take his hand and press your lips again to the scar that cuts through his palm. “I’d like to know more about them—you. I know next to nothing about what happened during the war.”

Lucifer sighs, but it is a sound of fondness. “One day. I promise.”

You nod. It’s enough for now to be able to _see_ , to catch a glimpse of the wounds that inform his personality, all the small things that have made him who he is today. For the rest—for his stories, his past, his future—you will wait. After all, the future is yours to share. You have all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Caspy for introducing me to the idea that maybe, just MAYBE, Lucifer is constantly wearing 3 layers of clothes because he has scars from the Celestial War. and thanks as always to Freddie for beta-ing and indulging in my daily crying about these characters.
> 
> [come hang out on Twitter and yell about OM with me](https://twitter.com/faikittyy)


End file.
